Freedom on the Horizon: Dutch Immigrants in America, 1840-1920

Abstract

About a quarter of a million Dutch emigrants left the Netherlands for the United States between 1840 and 1940 in search of freedom. Dutch historian Hans Krabbendam analyzes how this relatively modest group succeeded to build an enduring subculture in the American Midwest. Protestant immigrants in particular secured the survival of their group thanks to careful preparation in the Netherlands, timely concentration in new areas opening up for settlement, temporary submission of personal ambitions to community goals, and ongoing open communication both with the motherland and among themselves. Thus, they created the means to buy time and sustain the formation of a new Dutch-American identity that they could pass on to the next generations. The climax of this subculture is to be found in the first decades of the twentieth century. After the latest wave of immigration between 1948 and 1960 had faded away, pressure to modernize loosened up the internal cohesion, but its remnants remain visible.